It is my pleasure to welcome author Shirley Harris-Slaughter to this blog. I met Shirley through the Rave Reviews Book Club, an online resource for writers. She has written two books, both of which I have enjoyed. The first, Our Lady of Victory, the Saga of an African American Catholic Community, is an historical account of a Detroit church in the mid-1940s. Her second book, Crazy! Hot! And Living On The Edge, addresses her health crisis and the steps she took to wellness. Because of her journey, she has become an advocate for natural health and healing, and in her guest blog she shares glimpses of her hard-earned wisdom. Thank you for joining us, Shirley.~ ~ ﻿﻿~ There are no words that can really explain ‘crazy’ as in an emotional roller coaster one experiences when your whole body is out of whack. Most of the time this is brought on by a hormonal imbalance that I believe every woman in this country is afflicted with. How else do you explain the dreaded cramps that virtually every female will experience in her lifetime?I can remember one time during my monthly visit from our dear Mother Nature, that I experienced the crazies as well as those awful cramps. I started crying for no reason at all. Out of the clear blue, I started bawling like a baby and thought I was losing my mind. But, it was those darn hormones. This would not be the last time this would happen to me.

As the years went by, I experienced quite early another phenomenon, hot flashes! Yes, I was ‘hot’ and couldn’t explain it because it came in waves depending on what mood I was in. I was hot and uncomfortable all the time. Then when I reached 50+ I went into full blown menopause and a health crisis ensued.

In between all of this, my life became a balancing act of emotions, panic attacks, and stress. Not knowing when the attacks were going to strike kept me on edge. I was frightened out of my mind because there were no real answers out there. I eventually reached a medical crisis!Crazy! Hot! And Living On The Edge provides the steps by which author Shirley Harris-Slaughter surmounted her medical crisis. As part of her recovery, she tackled the difficult questions posed by her editor, and this process opened the door to understanding and deeper healing. Some of those questions are listed below:Was it a decent marriage before the troubles? Not at all. It wasn’t a normal marriage. He was self-destructing. We never got the chance to have a real married life. He deprived me of that experience. So I never got to plan a future with him. He passed away about a year ago. My son didn’t attend his funeral and neither did I. That’s the legacy he left.What went wrong? He had no goals, no ambition; and he was abusing drugs and alcohol. I decided I wanted no part of it or him and left. My son was the motivating factor. He was a year old and doesn’t remember the bad stuff.Was the divorce acrimonious? The divorce was not amicable. He didn’t want it and why should he? He had a good Catholic girl with good upbringing. He knew what he was losing. He did threaten me. We had a physical fight in the marriage.The only thing he had going for him was his good looks. He was absolutely gorgeous!How did he kidnap you?During our separation he carried on a campaign of phone harassments and threats. He surprised me with a visit in the parking lot on my job. I was getting into the car to go home and he jumped into the driver’s side and pushed me over to the passenger side and took off. I was stunned by his sudden appearance. Where did he hold you hostage and how did you escape?He took me to a hotel and tied my hands to a bed. I was afraid and started talking my way out of it. He threatened to kill me or take me to Flat Rock (He was employed at Ford’s in Flat Rock); but he wasn’t thinking rationally, and so I did whatever I could to diffuse the situation. I finally talked him into letting me go. This was not the first time he accosted me but it was the last.~ ~ ~Thank you, Shirley, for sharing aspects of your journey. Our backstories often contribute to our sorrows in life. Thank you, too, for offering the following contact links to readers:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ―Viktor E. Frankl,Man’s Search for Meaning